Food Fight?

by mathinaz

The kids are planning a food fight. I am terrified.

The good news: we learned about it in time. A kid reported it to a teacher, who bothered a whole bunch of kids to get names and then gave all those names to me. I got each of those kids in my office, put parents on the phone, and explained consequences for participating in a food fight. I requested extra teacher supervision at lunch and I know exactly where I plan to be standing the entire lunch period. The kids who were planning together are now all mad at one another because they all blame each other for adults finding out.

The bad news: it was supposed to be today, which we did not learn until after lunch. I think someone chickened out. They had a signal for when they were going to start and people all over the cafeteria involved. This now leaves me with these “what if?” images, where hundreds of kids are throwing food at one another and there is nothing we can do. Seriously, think about it. If enough kids started throwing food at once in a big, loud space, what are a couple of adults going to do? I envision myself yelling futilely while my hair drips with spaghetti sauce. I threatened big consequences today, but I don’t even know how you would pick out all the kids or enforce consequences in a big enough group. Plus, what happens to school culture when the kids finally realize that they wildly outnumber the adults? Yikes.